The Crumpet family's journey to Mortgage Freedom:-)

Pearla*Merle

Enjoy your spa day, Crumpets :T

greent

Have a gorgeously relaxing day today

Crumpets

Hello , the spa day was absolutely brilliant! I had a facial and scalp massage and a lime and ginger salt body scrub, it was dreamy. We also had a lovely lunch with Prosecco and lots of lounging by the pool and sitting in jacuzzi's. The spa day and facial was £44 on a deals site and my body scrub and lunch came to £50 which leaves me with £6 left of my birthday money...now what to spend that on?

I was back down to earth with a bump though and this week has been extremely busy so far. In a few weeks time a team of us are taking part in the Relay for life so last night I had a meeting for that. I'm the team captain so we have lots of organising and fundraising to do, all for a great cause though :T Today it has not stopped raining all day but I did venture out to the garden centre to meet my mum - £15 on tea and beans on toast for the kids :eek:

I have finally got round to sorting out this months OP and I managed to OP an extra £100 today making a total of £330.35 for this month :T We've also gone over the £10k barrier in total overpayments:T I'm really pleased with that as I haven't been including ebay (not that I've made much on there) Another £3 in the camping fund though this week:T On Saturday I'm doing another shift in my friends shop so I should have another £50 to OP next week:T

My Hou$eof Fr@ser goodies arrived the other day so my present box is nice and full:T Dd1 has a party to attend on Saturday so she will be taking along a bargain magic set reduced to £5 from £20 as a gift Did you manage to place an order RT? (I saw the sale on the Christmas bargain thread on mumsnet) I have also started my Christmas shopping and have the kids teachers gifts sorted, snowman candles at £1 each from te$co:T

Only one week to go until my holiday and I still need to buy some things, mainly shorts for me and dd1, t-shirts for dh and sun cream. I'm really pleased with the clothes I've brought the little ones on ebay, it's definitely saved me a lot, especially if the weather ends up being naff:cool:

I feel like I'm on holiday mode already and I think I'll be breaking my no alcohol in the week rule tonight

Crumpets x

Crumpets

Well my OP is now showing online and we have gone under £113K :T it's such a good feeling when we sneak under the next bracket. It's made me feel really motivated to carry on OP'ing as I was starting to lose the plot a bit, thinking about exotic holidays etc. Really with 2 pre-schoolers there isn't much point in spend ££££ on holidays as they are happy on any beach:o Hopefully by over paying now when they are old enough to appreciate nice holidays we'll be able to afford to take them.:D

Sadly it looks like we are going to have to spend a bit more than we anticipated on our windows. We wanted to restore the original sash windows in our living room and had a budget of about £500 a window, we had someone round to quote for the work the other day and he said the windows are so rotten it's not really worth saving them he quoted for the work anyway and it came in at £1000 a window:eek: so it looks like we're going to have to replace them. I really want wooden sash windows again so now we need to get quotes for that, I have no idea how much it's likely to cost but if we get new double glazing windows we won't need to have the secondary glazing that we've ordered so I hope we can cancel that without losing too much:(

Today I'm going shopping! I'll get the last bits for our holiday and I'm hoping to get what school uniform I can from M@at@lan or G£0rg£. I ordered dd2s school cardigans from T£$co as they now offer an embroidery service so you can get their school uniform with the school logo embroidered on. It's half the cost of getting the official school cardigans from the school shop :T

We're off out to a stately home for afternoon tea later to celebrate dh's grandma's 87th birthday, so that will be a nice treat. If it's anything like the afternoon teas I've had before we won't need to cook anything for dinner tonight:T

Crumpets x

Crumpets

Hello, I've just realised that my diary is now a year old :bdaycake: :j I've never kept any type of diary up for more than a few weeks before so this is a real achievement for me:D it has definitely helped me stay on track and I don't think I would have been able to op the amount I have without it.

I haven't really got much to report, I worked at my friends shop on Saturday so as soon as I'm paid for that I will Op it, I may put some in the camping fund though just so we have enough for a weekend away when we are ready to go. Talking of the camping fund, another 99p to add to it once I get paid for an item :rotfl: it's creeping up though, and it's money for stuff that was just hanging around so I'm not complaining. I have found a few more things to list so I might try and list them before I go on holiday, if I get time.

I had a coffee morning this morning at dd2's new school, it all seems very real now so I need to get the uniform. My shopping trip on Friday didn't go very well as the stuff in M@tal@n wasn't very good quality so I will try and take a trip to s@insbury's or wait for M&S to do their 20% off event.

Tonight I have a committee meeting but it's at a members house so no spending on drinks tonight :A I'm trying to spend as little as possible this week so we have more to spend on our holiday on Thursday. I will need a few basics and some nappies to see me through until then but the shopping and sundries funds should stay relatively healthy. I am booked in for a pedicure and a hair cut before I go though:o but that will come out of the clothing and beauty budget.

Crumpets x

juststuff123

Happy MF Diary Birthday!

RoaringTwenties

Hi Crumpets, happy diary birthday! :beer: I need to keep mine up a bit better I think . Glad it has helped you focus on the OPs. It's lovely when you break through another barrier isn't it? I think given the cost of raising three kids you're doing fantastically :j

Glad you enjoyed the spa day too. I used to think things like that weren't as good a spend as something tangible IYKWIM but since the kids I've changed my mind entirely - oh for a day [STRIKE]or an hour, or 20 mins actually [/STRIKE] to relax and be pampered!

All the best for the windows. A good friend has been through a similar thing with her period property. It wasn't cheap but she says she's noticed a massive difference in the temperature of the house and heating bills since.

And good luck with the race! Clearly you need cake to give you the required energy :rotfl:

Crumpets

Hi RT, I know what you mean about buying something tangible with birthday money, I always used to head straight to the clothes shops with any money I had, now I'm older I feel that it is a total waste! Spa days or similar give me something that I can't get anywhere else at the moment, peace, quiet and a feeling of calm, I love them!:rotfl:

Wel it's been busy busy busy as usual here, although I have found time to fit in a pedicure and a haircut were off on our holidays tomorrow so I've been rushing round making sure everything is sorted and that the house is in a reasonable state to come back to. There's nothing worse than coming back off holiday to a mess. I always remember my mum vacuuming and tidying madly before we went on holiday and I used to think why bother? But I totally get where she was coming from now

Not much MFW to report and I'm going to try not to stress about money while wer're away. I've been saving £20 a week holiday money for almost a year so we should have plenty to spend, it would be nice to bring some back with us though the main thing we will spend on is food, this is supposed to be a relaxing holiday so I'm not planning on cooking much at all, I have packed a packet of porridge oats for breakfasts though:cool:

See you in a week!

Crumpets xx

Goldiegirl

Have a lovely holiday

RoaringTwenties

Have a fab break Crumpets :T